


Got Your Nose

by ladyhoneydarlinglove



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Companion AU, Gen, Gift Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-29
Updated: 2016-04-29
Packaged: 2018-06-05 04:49:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,998
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6690154
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladyhoneydarlinglove/pseuds/ladyhoneydarlinglove
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Niles and Lilith have a heart to heart about noses, and how much they suck.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Got Your Nose

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lavellanpls](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lavellanpls/gifts).



It started, as these incidents often did, with the consumption of copious amounts of alcohol at the entirely inappropriate hour of mid afternoon. Niles couldn’t even be sure what compelled his companions to start drinking so early, or how Lilith’s nose managed to come up in the first place. One moment he had been asking Cole about dumping a bag of turnips into the fireplace, and the next, Cole’s gaze grew distant he spoke in a high-pitched mimic of children.

“Shem nose, shem nose, twitchy witchy Lilith’s gross,” Cole chanted, and the bottom dropped out of Niles’ stomach. “Other children singing when they think she can’t hear, grubby little bastards too scared to say it to her face. She tells herself she doesn’t care, but it’s a lie. Lies are the only way she knows how to protect herself.” Cole shook his head, large eyes blinking curiously as he came back to himself. “Sorry,” he said. “Lilith was suddenly very loud. What were we talking about?”

“What happened?” Niles demanded, his insides knotting up. “Why was she thinking about that stupid song?”

Cole frowned. “I’m not sure,” he said. “It just… popped up. She’s always thought she could’ve been pretty, except for her stupid shem nose,” he added, quite unnecessarily.

Niles groaned, burying his face in his hands. The loud slam of a door echoed through the building, amplified by the suspicious quiet of the tavern below. “By the Dread Wolf,” he muttered to himself. “I knew it, I knew this was going to happen eventually, I should have—I have to fix this.” He turned on his heel, pausing only to yell back at Cole, “And no more burning turnips please, that smell is horrible!”

Niles made his way to Iron Bull’s corner of the bar where he found several befuddled looking companions around a table littered with cards and coin, surrounded by a disturbing amount of empty bottles, mugs, tankards, and even a cask smashed open by what Niles could only assume was Iron Bull’s fist. Or possibly Lilith’s head. It was difficult to say. 

“All right,” Niles said, his tone encapsulating all the patience and utter disappointment of mother used to dealing with exceptionally naughty children. “Which one of you mentioned her nose?”

They all shifted guiltily, but Sera spoke first. “I didn’t mean anything!” she protested, slamming her mug on the table, ale sloshing everywhere. “I mean I did, but not… She wasn’t supposed to get angry about it! It’s nice! All pointy and small and—and like a proper nose!” She glared down at her own nose, eyes crossing angrily. “Not all elfy like my dumb conk.”

Niles closed his eyes, pained. “Creators help me, tell me you did not say that to her. Tell me you did not tell Lilith her nose wasn’t elfy.”

Sera coughed. “Erm,” she said.

“I believe the exact comment was, ‘How come you got a nice human shaped nose and all I got was this stupid elfy piece of shit sniffer?’” Varric supplied helpfully. “And then Killer got real quiet and things… pretty much went downhill from there.”

“Well it’s not like she goes around with a sign that says ‘don’t talk about my bloody nose’!” Sera snapped. “How was I supposed to know!”

She wasn’t. In Lilith’s own colorful words, she generally did not give a flying nug’s fuck about what people thought of her appearance, and nobody except he could understand that sentiment decidedly did not include her nose. They hadn’t grown up having to listen to that ridiculous rhyme.

Shem nose, shem nose, twitchy witchy Lilith’s gross!

“Alright,” Niles sighed. “For future reference, nobody says anything about Lilith’s nose unless she brings it up first. It’s a… touchy subject.”

“Why?” Iron Bull asked. “It’s a perfectly—”

“Iron Bull, what did I literally just tell you?” Niles snapped, and Iron Bull shut up. “No talking about Lilith’s nose. Not to her, not amongst yourselves, not to anyone.” He couldn’t really enforce the latter part of his statement, but hopefully it would deter any more gossip until he could at least talk to Lilith himself. “Am I understood?”

No one at the table could quite meet his eye, but they all grumbled in agreement, and Niles supposed that was the best he could hope for. “Good,” he said. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go fix this.”

He spent the better part of an hour looking for her, but it wasn’t until Niles actually found Lilith in the Undercroft, sitting on a bench in the corner and staring sadly at her reflection against the polished shine of her great axe that he realized no, he probably couldn’t fix this. 

He wanted to apologize, but what would he even say? I’m sorry our clan teased you mercilessly about your nose for so many years it left an emotional scar? I’m sorry your nose is the reason you apparently don’t think you’re pretty, which is something I shouldn’t even know, so thanks for that, Cole. I’m sorry I was a coward, that I didn’t stick up for you when I should have? All woefully inadequate. Words wouldn’t fix this.

Niles approached her anyway, because it seemed wrong not to after going to the trouble of finding her. Lilith spared him a single glance before scowling, and with what seemed to be a large effort, picked up the whetstone by her side and resumed sharpening her blade. “I’m fine, Beanpole,” she insisted. “I don’t need you checking up on me.”

“I know,” he said, and then added, because he needed it to be said, “Sera meant it as a compliment.”

“I know that,” Lilith snapped. “And it was a perfectly lovely thing to say. I don’t have a very elfy nose.” She glared, anger stirring beneath the surface and puffing her up. “And that’s fine. I don’t care. It’s a fucking great nose. I love my nose. It’s pointy, and small, and angular, and it makes me look—” She flung the whetstone aside, staring in defiance at the reflection in her axe for a precious few seconds before the bravado came crashing down, her shoulders slumping as she let the weapon fall away. “Like a witch,” she whispered. “Twitchy witchy Lilith. That’s me.”

Niles took a seat next to her on the bench, taking the axe from her grasp and propping it against the wall gently, catching sight of himself in the process, of his own crooked nose and its broken bridge. “If it helps, I hate my nose too,” he offered, because it was all he had.

Lilith snorted. “It’s different,” she said. “People ask you about your nose and you get to say, ‘Well this one time, some asshole city guards were harassing my mom so like an incredibly stupid but well-intentioned teenager, I hit them, and they hit back.’ It’s noble. You were trying to be a hero. Maybe you don’t like how it turned out, but you earned that nose. This?” She waved at her nose. “I was just born with this mess.”

Niles frowned. It sounded strange to hear the story spoken by someone else, someone who didn’t know the lie of it. He’d earned his broken nose, yes, but it had been through stupidity, not heroism. He supposed Lilith didn’t need to know that.

Or perhaps, Niles thought as an idea began to take root, she did. “What if I told you there was… Maybe another version of that story with just an incredibly stupid teenager and no good intentions, but rather an appalling lack of judgement?” he offered, smiling sheepishly. Words wouldn’t fix what was past, but a truth given in good faith might at least show Lilith Niles meant well now.

Lilith blinked at him. “What?” Her eyes narrowed in suspicion. “I don’t believe you. You always have good judgement.”

“Not at all true, but good to know I’ve managed to fool you into thinking so.” Niles leaned back against the wall, sighing. “Do you remember that summer Mahanon decided to show Niamh his romantic inclination by sweeping her off her feet with a passionate kiss in front of half the clan? With no prior indication of his feelings given?”

“Oh god, how could I possibly forget?” Lilith groaned. “It had everyone in a titter for months, they wouldn’t shut up about it. I thought I was going to go insane.” 

Niles coughed. “Yes, well… Some of us at the time thought it was an extremely romantic gesture, unparalleled in its genius, and that we might, um… Try it for ourselves.”

“On who? I thought none of the boys in the clan were interested in you back then.”

“They weren’t. It was an elven boy in Starkhaven, a son of one of the men my mum used to trade with. He was incredibly nice, and always spent what I thought were suspiciously long periods of time talking to me. He even shared some apples with me once, even though they were supposed to be for his sisters.” Niles sighed. “I thought it was certain he shared my crush, and I was just going to talk to him about it, but then Mahanon pulled off that big romantic gesture, and I, um…” Niles paused, feeling horribly uncomfortable and embarrassed by what he was about to share, but Lilith beat him to it.

She nearly shrieked, hands flying to her mouth in shock. “Son of a bitch, you tried to kiss him. You got sucker punched in the face by a boy because you tried to kiss him,” she gasped, eyes going wide. “That’s how you broke your nose?”

Niles winced, his cheeks going red. “That and… being so embarrassed by my stupidity that rather than seek medical attention, I kind of… hid. In the alienage. For about… a day and a half before my mum finally found me and dragged my sorry ass back to the clan.”

“Oh my god, Beanpole, that is…” Lilith looked sympathetic, but Niles also saw her struggling not to laugh, and while part of him wanted to crawl into a hole and die, he couldn’t deny it felt nice to have made her want to smile. “That is so bad. Just… ridiculously awful. Fuck.”

“Yes, well, you can see why I lied about it for so long,” Niles answered lightly, the nonchalant effect ruined by his beet red face. “But the truth is, I was an idiot. And now you know why I hate my nose too.”

Lilith stared at him, her face contorted almost comically in an effort to suppress her amusement. “You can laugh,” Niles sighed, resigned. “It is appalling stupid in hindsight.”

“I’m not gonna laugh,” Lilith promised, though her voice cracked a little. “I’m not… Whoo!” She took a few exaggerated breaths, managing to stifle the laughter but still breaking into a grin. A few moments passed, and then she asked, “Why tell me this now? Apart from trying to cheer me up.”

“Because it’s all I have,” Niles replied. “Look, I know the clan was… not always the family you deserved while you were growing up, and I was far more complicit in their behavior than I like to think about. Apologies and words won’t ever be enough to make up for that, but I can… I don’t know, show you that you can trust me now? Or at least that I trust you.” He offered her a smile. “Whatever your past with the clan, it doesn’t matter now. We’re here, we’re both fighting for the same cause, and I’d like to think that maybe we could be friends.”

“Friends?” She raised an eyebrow. “You sure you want to be friends with twitchy witchy Lilith, Beanpole?”

“Yes,” Niles said, and he meant it. “I do.” He paused, and then added, “And for the record, I always thought that song was moronic. And those kids were idiots. Nose doesn’t even rhyme with gross.”

Lilith laughed, not quite an answer, but enough.

**Author's Note:**

> This is so dumb I'm so sorry I just thought it was interesting that they both don't like their noses.


End file.
